


hang the moon

by marvcltrash



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Bucky Barnes-centric, Canon Disabled Character, College AU, Deaf Clint Barton, Disabled Bucky Barnes, M/M, Prompt Fill, Tumblr Prompt, mentioned trauma but no trauma on screen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-12 03:09:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11152980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marvcltrash/pseuds/marvcltrash
Summary: "A soulmate fic where you’ve got “Help! Save me!” on your wrist.  So you do the martial arts classes, and ROTC, and get a concealed carry permit, you are READY, you are SO up for this… and then one day you’re at a friend’s house, and someone comes pounding down the stairs laughing and ducks behind you and goes “Help! Save me!” and that’s how you find out your soulmate was escaping a tickle fight."Concept by @joisbishmyoga on tumblr





	hang the moon

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in less than four collective hours and I am very tired. Big thanks to @the_green_and_gold_journal who acted as beta reader!

Bucky knew he was older than his soulmate from a very young age, not because his soulmark didn’t show up until he was five, but because he just had a feeling. His mother told him it showed up when he was very nearly two, but he doesn’t quite remember that either. He also knew from a very young age that he had to do everything in his power to be prepared for his soulmate. They trusted him, from the first moment they saw him, and that had to mean something, whether it be about who he was, or who they were. He had to be prepared for whatever they needed from him. 

“Help! Save me!” his soulmark read, emblazoned in black on his right wrist, perfectly well for anyone to see. Bucky was only glad it wasn’t on his left wrist, the one he lost in the war during his one and only tour in Afghanistan. He cleared that from his mind, focussing on one of the reasons he went into the military in the first place: college. Protecting his soulmate was the reason he went through all of the training, but actually joining the military would pay for his college tuition. He didn’t know at the time that he would be paying for college with his left arm. He’d only been back a year and a half. 

“Come on, Buck, this party is nonnegotiable. Natasha can and will kick our asses. We’re supposed to be meeting her friends tonight, and she won’t stand for this,” his best friend, Steve Rogers, interrupted his thoughts succinctly, pulling on his right hand to drag him. Steve was barely five foot five, crawling up on a buck fifty soaking wet, and knew cold that he couldn’t really drag Bucky anywhere. Bucky went along willingly anyway, more than willing to be dragged rather than having to make the active decision to move. Steve let go of him by the time they made it a couple of feet, so Bucky made a game of stopping every time Steve wasn’t dragging him. Steve, unsurprisingly, was not amused. 

“James Buchanan Barnes, I swear to God,” Steve said beneath his breath, just grabbing his hand rather than letting him lag behind. When they were younger, Bucky had once thought that maybe Steve could be his soulmate, but Steve had never wanted to be protected in his life. The boy would rather die standing on his own two feet than live to see another day standing behind someone else. Bucky found it admirable, if a touch stupid. That was a basic summation of Steve Rogers’s entire character: admirable, wonderful, impulsive, idiotic. Steve had waited for Bucky to come back to go to college, admirable and idiotic. Bucky followed along with his thought silent, pushing down the anxiety of meeting new people to instead find comfort in the hand of his best friend. 

“Now, Natasha said she warned everyone about not pissing you off, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get pissed off. Anybody even gives you a bad vibe, let me know. Swear, I’ll punch someone in the face at this party,” Steve reminded him, a code for  _ Everyone at this party knows you have PTSD, but that doesn’t mean they know better _ . Bucky sighed and nodded along instead of protesting, the usual routine of the two of them hanging out with anyone else. Natasha was good with navigating his psychosis, given her own, but nobody outside of Bucky’s regular relations could really be trusted. The walk to Natasha’s small apartment just off campus was made short by distraction, and she was opening the door nearly as soon as they stepped to it, having been let into the building by someone else going out. 

“Alright, guys, I’ll go get the last few lingering from upstairs, and then I’ll introduce you to everyone. Sound good?” she said, easily offering a cop-out to both Steve, with his social anxieties, and to Bucky, with his all kind of anxieties. Neither of them made a move to take her up on it, but both of them appreciated the gesture nonetheless. She nodded at their silence and turned around without another word, leading them into the small foyer. It was intimately decorated with swaths of red, and the only thing of substance in the room was the cherry wood staircase. She went up it, but Bucky and Steve stayed where they were, awkward. 

The silence wasn’t new to the pair of them, comfortable and familiar between them rather than awkward in and of itself. It could have stretched on for seconds or minutes or hours, with the condition Bucky’s perception of time was under, being a person with a strange schedule and multiple mental illnesses. It really couldn’t have been much longer, he thought, before a blond man came thundering down the stairs, running and laughing. He ducked behind Bucky before Bucky could observe any other features about him, quick as a rabbit and certainly at least eighty times as loud. 

“Help! Save me!” the blond man said, still laughing loudly. Steve startled visibly next to him, as well as Natasha at the top of the stairs; both of them knew exactly the words of his soulmark, and recognised when they were said. Bucky realised all at once that the years of training were more or less a waste, but not one he regretted. Bucky didn’t know what Natasha did to get his soulmate yelling, but he would place his bets on a tickle fight; she was known for clever fingers and not giving a single fuck. 

“Well, hello to you, too,” he said rather than saying anything flirtatious or rude, reigning in both of his usual automatic responses. The man behind him stilled in a way that even Bucky knew it had happened, hands tight on Bucky’s shoulders. Bucky turns around to look at him, a smirk already settled on his face before he even looked at him. He was a few inches shorter than Bucky, perhaps five nine or five ten, and his hair was about the colour of sand. He had some of the most intense blue eyes Bucky had ever seen, even coming from the best friend of one Steve Rogers. He was incredible. 

“Hi. I’m - I’m Clint Barton,” he said, stumbling over his words in a way Bucky struggled not to find adorable. He was the type of person who had been in love with his soulmate his whole life, and he was struggling with a great many impulses right now. Good examples would be the desire to reach out and touch, the repetitive thoughts that Clint was cute, the desire to use an inordinate amount of shitty pick up lines. It got a little hard to think past the jumbled impulses, so he pushed all of them down at once, picking just one. Following the usual social command, he introduced himself. 

“I’m Bucky Barnes. It’s a real pleasure to meet you,” Bucky replied, also striking down the old-timey desire to hold out a hand for a handshake. Clint smiled at the sound of his name, though Bucky didn’t really understand why. What he did understand was the immediate love he had for that smile, and how much he wanted to see it every day. Less than five minutes after meeting his soulmate, he was completely fucked. 

“Not as pleasurable as it’s gonna be - fuck, shit - Aw, futz, Barton, shitty pick up lines on your soulmate? Come on man,” Clint was talking to himself for the last bit, but it was cute all the same. Bucky found himself smiling down at the other man, completely taken aback by exactly how much he already liked him. Liking his soulmate had never been a part of the thought equation; he knew he would love them, but liking who they were as a person had never actually occurred to him. He was glad it was happening now. 

“Barnes, meet my best friend, Clint Barton. Clint, meet my other best friends, James Buchanan Barnes and Steve Rogers. I can already guess which one you care more about meeting. Steve Rogers found dead in Miami,” Natasha said in a deadpan, raising a single eyebrow at her foyer. Clint moved a hand to the back of his neck, a movement Bucky tracked despite himself and was suddenly entranced by the intense musculature of Clint Barton’s arms. Holy fuck. He only noticed that he was staring because Clint’s arm moved, suddenly waving at him. Bucky could feel himself blushing. 

“Hi. I’m Clint Barton,” Clint introduced himself much more levelly to Steve, turning towards the other man. He stayed firmly between Bucky and the wall, seemingly very comfortable directly in Bucky’s orbit. Bucky didn’t mind the position he was in either, but the word choice of that thought quickly got away from him. He turned around halfway (so he was still partially facing Clint) so that he could address Natasha clearly. 

“Aren’t we supposed to be meeting multiple friends? I mean, I’m satisfied and good, but I’m sure everyone else would like to mingle a little,” Bucky said, part of which was directly for Clint’s benefit. The blond snorted in a way that should have been unattractive, and yet Bucky still found irrefutably adorable. He was going soft, wasn’t he? His undoing would be a bedraggled young man in a beat up purple hoodie and sweats that looked like they had some sort of pizza related pattern on them. And, he couldn’t even be mad. He was  _ happy  _ to be going soft for some man he just met. It only occurred to him then that Clint might want a platonic soulmate ship - Clint may not have even liked men. He didn’t ask, yet. 

“Well, I’m Sam Wilson,” a man said from the very top of the stairs, only then coming down them, startling the lot of them. He was a rather attractive man with hair cropped close, big brown eyes and a devil may care grin. When he came to the bottom of the stairs, he spoke again. “And you’re the famous Steve Rogers. She’s told me about you,” Sam said, and a collective gasp went between Steve, Natasha and Bucky himself. 

“Sam Wilson,” Steve replied simply, “I believe you’re my soulmate.” Sam approached him slowly, with a kind of caution that immediately gave him credit in Bucky’s eyes. He wouldn’t just trust his first best friend with someone else, even if that someone else just happened to be Steve’s soulmate. He had trusted Steve’s other soulmate with him, and while they still spoke and had a good platonic relationship, he knew it broke Steve’s heart when Peggy chose to be with Angie. Bucky didn’t trust so easily now. Sam nearly reached out to touch Steve, but took his hand back with a rather embarrassed expression that he covered quickly, turning to Natasha instead and pursing his lips at her. 

“You knew didn’t you? Looked at our handwritings like the little spy you are,” he accused, rightfully knowing Natasha. She nodded without shame and smirked up at him, completely unafraid of any petty retribution he could throw at her. As a person without a soulmate at all, Natasha liked to see other soulmates get together, Bucky knew. She didn’t want a soulmate, but the idea was nice. 

“Did you do that with us, Tasha? Because, like thanks, but not cool,” Clint asked, but Natasha nearly immediately shook her head. 

“Barnes wouldn’t let me see his handwriting, nor the writing on his wrist. Couldn’t be nosy with that one,” she told him, shrugging one shoulder. “Speaking of which, don’t all of you need to talk? The bedrooms are free upstairs, but if you fuck in my house, you’re catching these hands,” she told all of them, walking into the living room and turning on the television before any of them react. 

“We’re going to Tasha’s bedroom, you guys can go to Tony’s,” Steve announced, dragging his willing soulmate up the stairs. Tony, the person Natasha shared an apartment with, was at his own soulmate’s apartment, the widely known physics major Bruce Banner. He was widely known for his tendency to make labs explode, which was what had drawn Tony to introduce himself in the first place. What had drawn Tony to foot most of the bill of his apartment with Natasha was, Bucky had never been sure. Clint cleared his throat, drawing Bucky’s attention. 

“You want to go upstairs? Because we don’t have to,” Clint said, giving him a place to cop-out naturally. Bucky decided immediately that he didn’t want to do that, reaching out a hand to Clint, and dragging him up the stairs when he took it. Clint went as willingly as Sam had, following a step behind Bucky and yet somehow not uncomfortably close. Bucky followed the familiar path to Stark’s bedroom, leading Clint in and shutting the door behind them. The path was familiar because Bucky usually came up to drink with Tony, and the absence of the usual objective was strange. 

“Okay, so I’m going to start with the simple questions. Do you want a romantic or platonic soulmateship? Because I’ll go for whatever you’re comfortable with,” Clint started in with the most obvious question, and Bucky was glad he didn’t beat around the bush with it. 

“I’d rather go for romantic, if you’d be comfortable with that. And, based on the comment earlier, that’s not all you’d be comfortable with,” Bucky flirted, and Clint went red almost immediately. It was a fetching colour on him, especially with the purple of the hoodie, but Bucky resisted the temptation to make fun of his soulmate so early in the game. Clint, once the embarrassment cleared, smiled a great big smile that made Bucky feel like he may have hung the moon himself. He was a very pretty man, and Bucky wanted to know everything about him. “Tell me about yourself. Anything,” he invited, certainly not wanting to go first. 

“You may not like everything I have to tell you, and I’m gonna start with the most difficult things first. First, I’m disabled, and if you have a problem with that, that’s it. I retain twenty percent of my hearing, and I wear aids, but being deaf is important. I was raised in a pretty fucked up way that I don’t want to get into. I’d love it if you told me about you, because I’m starting to feel pretty awkward,” Clint virtually word vomited, speaking very quickly and with little space between words. Clint stopped making eye contact about halfway through his explanation, and Bucky had been distracted by it ever since. It took Bucky a moment to realise he was supposed to reply with things about himself, and geared himself up to speak. 

“As a kid, I took my soulmark really, stupidly seriously, and have been in combat training most of my life. I’m trained in like five major martial arts and two smaller walks of martial arts, I joined ROTC, and when they offered to pay for my college, I joined the military. Lost my left arm in Afghanistan, we’re gonna skim over that, and now I’m going to college,” Bucky explained in an equally word vomiting fashion, and had to watch as Clint looked down at where his left arm used to be. In its place, a Stark model prosthetic was attached to Bucky’s shoulder, shining and silver and sticking out like a sore thumb. 

“Shit, and I thought abusive parents and joining the circus was going to be too much baggage,” Clint remarked quietly, and Bucky huffed a laugh. Clint looked up at the sound, finally making eye contact with Bucky again; it was strange how relieving it was. Though, he hadn’t quite realised how close they were until they were looking at each other again. The blue of Clint’s eyes was even more intense up close, and Bucky might have been having minor heart palpitations. “I really want to kiss you,” Clint said, apropos of nothing. Bucky leaned down a little, inviting Clint to do just that, and unsurprisingly, he did. 

It would be fair to say that Bucky Barnes had kissed a lot of people in his life. He was dedicated to his soulmate, and part of that was being prepared if they wanted a romantic relationship. However, he couldn’t have been prepared for how kissing Clint would feel, how his soulmate would cup his face like he was important. Clint’s hands were rough, but Bucky didn’t really mind; actually, he rather enjoyed the texture against his stubble, and wouldn’t mind it being there more often. That was to say, that he wouldn’t mind kissing Clint for however long his soulmate would let him. Based on the enthusiasm from Clint alone, that would last for a rather long time. Bucky pulled away reluctantly. 

“I think we’re supposed to be socializing after we figure things out,” Bucky said; he did not say  _ I don’t think things have ever felt more figured out than kissing you _ , even though it came to mind. Clint groaned but nodded reluctantly, dragging Bucky back out of the room and down the stairs in some kind of reverse from earlier. Steve and Sam were already settled on Natasha’s couch, looking as comfortable as people who had known each other for years rather than minutes. Bucky raised an eyebrow but let it go, claiming the loveseat for himself and Clint. They still hadn’t stopped holding hands. 

“Are you guys going to be too gross to play Call of Duty? Because I’m totally not having that,” Natasha asked, and the weird atmosphere was gone. Clint and Bucky both volunteered to play, both of them sharpshooters (Bucky learned that Clint was an archer, and Clint that Bucky was a sniper). Life went on. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
